


Bittersweet

by Bekaylo



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Injury, Aftermath of Torture, Anal Sex, Christmas Eve, Depression, Food Fight (kind of), Food Sex, HYDRA Husbands, M/M, Oral Sex, Permanent Injury, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Esteem Issues, Thumb-sucking, Unorthodox Flavored Lube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 13:29:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5498771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bekaylo/pseuds/Bekaylo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Christmas Eve and Brock wants to make pancakes with maple syrup. Jack loves pancakes - with chocolate sauce.<br/>“Pancakes. Jack?” Brock asked.</p><p>Jack was feeling horny, as he often was these days. Nothing like a death sentence and a couple months of demoralizing limp dick to make a man insatiable. He licked his lips.</p><p>“Yeah, pancakes,” he said. “Sounds good. With plenty of chocolate sauce.” </p><p>“Maple syrup,” stated Brock.</p><p>“Nah. Chocolate.” Jack aligned himself more between Brock’s legs, running his hands up the other man’s thighs and kneading his hips.</p><p>Brock snorted softly. “You gotta have maple syrup on pancakes. It’s the natural order of things,” he said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bittersweet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iainkillsrobots (prozacplease)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prozacplease/gifts), [Moons_of_Avalon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moons_of_Avalon/gifts), [linguamortua](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/gifts).



> With thanks to Iainkillsrobots (LittleAntichrist) for a beta/edit and an education in cranberry jelly.  
> Thanks to Moons_of_Avalon for the decisive verdict 'You have maple syrup on pancakes. It's the natural order of things,'  
> This story was inspired by Loyalty by linguamortua

When winter set in, Brock and Jack became increasingly housebound. Their previously twice-weekly trips to the stores became as close to fortnightly as possible. Brock, anxious and self-conscious in public, was always visibly relaxed in the truck when they were headed home. Today he kept his hood up in the small diner where they had breakfast and coffee, but piped up about egg preferences when they ordered. 

In the truck on the drive home, Brock reached out to find a radio station while Jack drove, focussed on the snowy asphalt. He gripped the steering wheel firmly with both hands, elbows out, remaining fingers inwards. He had some confidence in this ability now; he had both thumbs and long palms for further firm grip.

His depth perception was fucked and sometimes he wondered how he would cope with city driving. He knew the road from town and the back roads here like the backs of his damaged hands. This was fine. In reality, it was unlikely he ever would be city driving any time soon.

Brock found a station playing some of the 1990s club classics he had always been so fond of. Music of his twenties, when he was young and beautiful, but gaining more self-confidence overall. A second on a STRIKE team himself, favoured by their captain. When he had moved out of what Jack understood was a certain shadow in his past. Brock’s gloved fingers hovered by the dial. He blinked at the music as if conflicted, then sat back, hunching, dropping his hand and looking resigned, then blank.

Brock’s hood was still up over a beanie hat; a scarf was still wrapped around his lower face. He looked like a cross between a burglar and an Alaskan explorer or something. The merciless white light from the snowy passing landscape nonetheless highlighted the pink scarring around his eyes. He was stiffer, slower, and he sat in that quiet way too often. The hunching and the facial marking giving him the appearance of a wizened little old man.

Reminding Jack of old men sitting quietly outside in the bright sun, watching the world go by in the streets off the Piazza Grande, Arezzo. Brock as he might reasonably be expected to look in twenty years or so. It brought back the memory of a certain place and time in their lives which was mainly a good memory, but the present reality was still sad.

Jack would not be driving anywhere near a city anytime soon for several good reasons and one upsetting reason. Brock did not want to go anywhere near a populated area and enjoy the urban entertainments he once loved. It was not clear whether 90s club classics were a bit of nostalgia or a form of self-torture for Brock, but Jack acted on impulse, perhaps to recreate old familiar patterns.

He reached down and changed the channel on the radio, practiced at turning his whole head instantaneously to lay one eye on the display and finding a particular station with one hand. Pause, static, then a woman singing /If it makes you happy/ to guitar-led country music. Jack liked that sort of thing as it happened, and favored that channel in particular.

“...fuck? ...the fuck is this…?” murmured Brock in his scratchy voice. He frowned at the car radio and turned his head to Jack slowly, like something rusty was coming to life. “Fuck is this shit?”

Jack shot him a warning look, complete with raised eyebrow. 

Brock frowned again, kind of puzzled more than really angry. “I was listening,” he said vaguely, as if more to himself than making a genuine protest. Jack shrugged, partly because he had to remember to relax while driving. Rather than hold himself stiffly, he desperately had to keep position on the wheel.

Brock’s eyes flickered over the movements of Jack’s shoulders and settled on the careful, compromised big hands on the wheel. Jack shot him another look, both patronizing and affectionate. “What about it?” he asked.

Brock snorted, turned his head away, turned it back once, then started staring out of the passenger window. There was a definite additional crinkle around those scarred eyes and therefore, a tiny smirk under the scarf.

“Sunovabitch...” murmured Brock.

“Pain in my ass,” said Jack solemnly and grinned wolfishly at the road ahead. 

Okay and getting better.

_______________________

 

Brock had picked up a string of fairy lights in the store. There had been a lot of seasonal items on sale and it had seemed to trigger Brock into a burst of festive shopping. Picking the lights up on impulse, he had then proceeded to throw a small whole turkey and a can of Ocean Spray canned cranberry sauce into the cart. 

Back at the house, Brock put the box of fairy lights on a table, considering it with his head on one side while Jack began putting the groceries away. Jack took a bottle of Italian wine out of a bag and placed it in a cupboard almost furtively, then grinned as Brock wandered over.

Jack made a lazy grab as he passed, ripping down the hood of Brock’s jacket. He wanted to cheer things up. He ruffled Brock’s hair—in the past you couldn't touch that hair. Although of course Jack often used to because it made this little cocksure cocksucker ruffle his feathers and puff out his chest. Now, it just served to make the softer, less product laden, less precise style Brock wore more like it used to be. The static from the hood plus the ruffling made it stand up more.

Brock smiled a little and half-heartedly jerked his head away. He pulled himself up on the counter with a fluid movement, only a little stiffer and slower than it might have been before the Triskelion apparently “fell on him.” He picked up the can of cranberry jelly, turning it over in his hands.

“I wanna Christmas tree,” he announced, softly.

“All right,” murmured Jack, turning towards him and leaning on the counter at the hip.

“We could just get one from outside. Or part of one,” added Brock. “‘I'll do it.” He shrugged as if instinctively being reasonable against any argument. Just remembered behaviour, it seemed, as there was no objection from Jack. Just going through the motions.

“I’ll do it,” Jack said pleasantly.

He studied Brock’s face. He was subdued, like he usually was after grocery trips, vague. Fuck it was like—it was not the old Brock, not the man who rescued him, who has been a very different pain in the ass for years. It was like the old men in Arezzo Jack had remembered. Brock was not only physically moving differently. He was dreamy. Sometimes, he moved and spoke like he was in a dream. Jack moved to Brock and took the can out of his unresisting hands. He wanted to make out now that they were back.

“I wanna make pancakes,” Brock stated quietly. Fuck, he was so subdued again. The spark of the little asshole in the car was what Jack wanted to reignite. It was cute. The lights, the cranberry jelly, the tree idea. Brock was so easy to manage these days. He generally agreed with everything Jack said. He had rescued Jack and taken care of him and now often retreated to what might be a kind of contentment, to some extent. But it was also quiet defeat, for certain.

Jack was alive and rescued, panic over, Brock had fallen into brooding about injuries, loss of self-esteem and delayed shock. Jack knew Brock had been diagnosed with PTSD back in his Army days and was certainly suffering from more now. But Jack always believed in letting shrinks deal with that kind of thing. There were no shrinks here, just Jack and he had his own ways of dealing with most people, especially Brock.

Jack had no objections to Brock wanting to do something festive. Neither of them were religious or particularly traditional. But there had been times in the past when they had spent this time of year with good food and beer and plenty of couch or bedtime in a festive spirit. Jack had experienced the hybrid Italian/American Christmas Day hospitality of Brock’s Nona a couple of times. That had been why he had impulsively picked up the bottle of wine at the store today.

“Pancakes. Jack?” Brock asked, slightly more assertively, with a questioning tilt of his head.

Jack was feeling horny, as he often was these days. Nothing like a death sentence and a couple months of demoralizing limp dick to make a man insatiable. He licked his lips.

“Yeah, pancakes,” he said. “Sounds good. With plenty of chocolate sauce.” 

“Maple syrup,” stated Brock.

“Nah. Chocolate.” Jack aligned himself more between Brock’s legs, running his hands up the other man’s thighs and kneading his hips. Brock snorted softly. “You gotta have maple syrup on pancakes. It’s the natural order of things,” he said.

“Is that so…? Chocolate’s good too.” Jack glanced to his left, where one of the cupboards contained squeezy bottles of dessert toppings and looked back at Brock, holding his gaze. Brock tended to focus on Jack’s face when it was right in front of his like this. Jack opened the cupboard without taking his eyes off Brock; he reached for the condiments and brought them practically nose to nose.

A flicker of the beginning of a smirk twitched at one corner of Brock’s mouth. He probably thought Jack might kiss him. Brock still nearly always let Jack initiate kissing, a remnant of that precise dance around Brock’s Fragile Masculinity that Jack used to perform. 

“Try some chocolate sauce,” said Jack pulling back and shaking the bottle in front of Brock. He opened it and squeezed some on his thumb with a loud squelch. Brock blinked and shook his head.

“Why not? You like it,” Jack put his thumb up to Brock’s mouth. “Open up.”

Brock chuckled and licked some of it off Jack’s thumb, smiling somewhat condescendingly. 

“Come on, open up,” Jack urged him in just the right insistent tone for Brock to open that pretty mouth and take the thumb inside it. He sucked Jack’s thumb, pulling off the thick, rich sauce with several tugs and a sweep of his tongue which made Jack’s breath hitch. Right then, he knew exactly where Brock was going to be trying sauce from next.

Brock pulled back from Jack’s thumb, smacking his lips and running his tongue over them. It was sticky and sweet and it seemed to cling to his lips. His tongue just transferred more when he tried licking it off. Jack watched this with intense fascination.

“More,” breathed Jack. “Open. Again.”

Jack watched Brock frown in some amusement. Any reaction was better than his previous dampened state.

Jack pushed more right into Brock’s mouth with a three fingers from his right hand. There was a muffled protest this time, Brock’s eyes squeezing shut and one stiff hand snapped around Jack's wrist. Jack wiggled his three fingers in Brock's mouth, pressing the sauce into his tongue. One of the most powerful muscles in the human body and one of the hottest weapons in Brock’s arsenal of hot body parts as far as Jack was concerned. What that tongue could do elsewhere…

Jack’s free hand moved around and gripped the back of Brock's neck. He used to like being held like that, symbolically forced with Jack crowding him and manhandling him. They had compromised years ago when Jack got it into his head he wanted to act less like a fucking dom and more like a reciprocal boyfriend. Brock had realised he could work with both kinds of treatment too.

Right now, when Brock was sinking into his defeated old man mood, there was one way to snap him out of it. Those old cues of dominance that Brock had wanted but always put up his little stubborn pride act against.

Brock shuffled back on his ass a little, his head jerking sideways as if to get away from Jack’s grasp. His face was a mixture of discomfiture and amusement and he made a sound midway between a grunt and a giggle.

Jack pressed the sauce right up into his palate with his left middle finger, turned his wrist, then turning back to rub it on Brock’s tongue again. Brock squirmed and gagged ever so slightly. He could cope with a lot more than that in his mouth at once, for fuck’s sake.

“Keep still,” ordered Jack.

Brock’s still strong hand grasped Jack’s wrist harder. Jack needed to be careful. He could still get a sharp jab in his softer parts if he pushed things too far. There used to be the possibility of a bite in this type of situation, though it occurred to Jack that these days Brock might not bite his remaining fingers. He usually displayed signs of reverent tenderness towards Jack's mutilated hands.

Brock pushed at Jack’s wrist, however.

“What’s wrong? Too sweet?” asked Jack, considering his next move. He stopped moving his hand in Brock’s mouth, just let his fingers sit there in the warm, wet cavity that made him think of other places he could wriggle them in.

“Too thweet,” agreed Brock around Jack's fingers. 

“Okay.” Jack tilted his head. “Let’s take the edge off that.” He removed his fingers again and unzipped his jeans.

Brock’s eyes had followed Jack’s hands. He licked the corner of his mouth in a subtle way that had nothing to with chocolate sauce as Jack took out his dick and stroked it lightly between thumb and two remaining fingers on his left hand. He held out the sauce bottle to Brock with his free hand; Brock took it unthinkingly and began shuffling off the counter when Jack beckoned him with a right middle finger.

“Try it on this.” Jack jerked his cock and indicated the sauce with his head when Brock was kneeling in front of him.

Brock looked vaguely intrigued and slightly dazed. Responding to cues more than anything. Jack knew Brock liked blowing him, however. Cocksucking was one of Brock's greatest talents, in Jack’s view. Brock actually seemed to prefer sucking Jack off to getting a blowjob, but Brock’s favorite thing overall was getting fucked by Jack.

Brock squelched chocolate sauce into both his hands, wrinkling his nose a little, but immediately begin rolling it onto Jack’s ever stiffening dick. He glanced up for approval, then set about licking the sauce from the engorged surface. His tongue swirled around Jack’s cockhead and collected a long stripe from under the shaft.

Jack ran his hands through Brock’s hair and gripped his head. “Take it. Take it in,” he urged. Brock obeyed him and Jack nudged his dick deep into Brock’s mouth. Brock gagged a little and made a protesting sort of whine, but he knew what he was doing. Soon he was sniffling contentedly around Jack’s dick, bobbing his head.

There was chocolate sauce in Brock’s mouth again. It was sticky on his palate, slightly gritty from some reaction between pre-cum and cocoa solids. His mouth was also full of the salty, familiar taste of Jack and it was a lot less icky-sweet this way. Jack reached down and grasped his neck, thrusting with his hips. Brock was being facefucked by a slightly sour, chocolate flavoured form of Jack’s dick. It was all right, more than all right. “Uuuugh, try… this,” 

Jack was making some low, gratified sounds and Brock guessed he would soon be getting another kind of smooth substance to taste. He kneaded Jack’s hips, tilting his head back to straighten the line of this throat, nose breathing wetly.

Abruptly, Jack tugged his hair and ordered him off. Jack was red-faced and panting, holding Brock’s hair loosely and looking like he was struggling.

Confused, eyes watering, chocolate sauce round his mouth and with a massive hard on of his own, Brock hissed, “What the fuck...?”

Jack had hardly ever stopped him mid-blowjob. Only a couple of times. Once when he heard the radio crackle to life in a safehouse and their job intervened, once when they heard teammates returning to the Triskelion locker room, then that time the gym was annoyingly double booked, the year before aliens attacked New York. 

“I need to try the syrup. Only fair.” Jack’s voice was a lusty growl, looking down on Brock with a predatory expression. Brock spread his hands in a bemused gesture and Jack lunged, grabbing him under the armpits. He lifted Brock, who went with it, still bemused as Jack turned him and pushed him up against the counter, tugging down his sweatpants and pushing him forward.

Brock went with it, bending forward to push his ass towards Jack. It was obvious what was going to happen and it was fucking hot.

“What you doin’?” gasped Brock nonetheless.

Jack paused, looking at Brock's perfect, olive ass, lightly mottled with burn scars which had a very familiar pattern to Jack. He rallied, grabbed the maple syrup from the cupboard to the left, and there was another deliberately filthy squelch.

Jack was squeezing syrup into Brock’s asscrack, then his already chocolate-smeared, leaking boner was rubbing against him. Jack groaned obscenely,with the resistance between two hard yet supple asscheeks, plus the sticky drag of maple syrup, this could have gotten Jack off in no time, even if he hadn't been desperately close already. He intended to finish this the way Brock was going to like best. He was a man of iron will; he had that reputation to maintain.

Brock squirmed on the counter when Jack pushed inside him unstretched, bit by bit, sticky and stinging. It was slow torture for Jack, being considerate that way. Brock could hear him grunting through and swearing a little. It was hot. Then he withdrew a little, muttering before he let go, then thrusting into the unusually sticky hot wetness of Brock.

Brock’s arms shot out and sent a cutlery stand flying with a metallic clatter. There was nothing but a stretching sticky-dragging sting and a hot, thick squelch of pooled syrup collecting on his sweet spot. It was amazing, but it was over in half a minute.

Jack came smoothly but hard, grunting and arching over Brock. “Oh fuuck… baby.” His hot breath gusting on Brock’s neck as he flopped and finally rested over Brock’s back. It was not enough.

“Jack…” Brock wriggled, frustrated and tried to push against the counter for his own relief. Jack was on the case, reaching around with a sticky, finger-depleted hand to stroke him, his gun-calloused, syrupy thumb twisting over his cockhead. Brock came with a series of desperate, greedy gasps, still slightly breathless from the aborted blowjob, writhing on the counter.

They lay panting, intimate and sticky for a few moments, before Jack retrieved his hand and licked his thumb with a smack.

“Not bad, maple syrup,” he mused. “And chocolate…” He put his hand in front of Brock’s face. “What do you think?”

Brock did not hesitate. He took hold of Jack’s wrist and pulled his hand close, tonguing sticky fingers experimentally before taking them in his mouth again, lapping up the residue of maple syrup, chocolate sauce and his own jizz. 

Jack chuckled and watched him in fascination, like he was hand feeding an unusual, cute petting zoo animal. Then he pulled back and slapped Brock’s ass lightly.

“How about those pancakes?” he asked. 

“Okay,” Brock chuckled. “Maple syrup and chocolate sauce?”

Later, on the couch in crackling firelight, Brock leaned on Jack’s shoulder and licked his fingers, sticky with pancake, maple syrup and chocolate sauce. There was a plate with the remnants of devoured fluffy pancakes, empty sauce bottles and discarded forks. The kitchen was a bomb-site of flour, egg shells, strewn cutlery and sticky messes. The air was rich with the smell of heated oil, sweetness and sex.

Jack luxuriated on the sofa, picking a piece of pancake out of one of his jagged, cracked molars with his tongue. He sighed contentedly. Fuck the mess. here were better things to worry about these days—a better thing to fuck at his leisure

Brock, sticky and fucking sweet, watching the fire, murmured, “Jack, what do you think about butterscotch sauce?”.

**Author's Note:**

> This is intended as an antidote to LINK TEXT GOES HERE 
> 
>  
> 
> Bury Them In The Woods. They will wake up the next morning alive and well to argue about turkey preparation.


End file.
